.. and Santanas, and a bit about our Landy travels, and repairs, and the usual really

Tuesday, 15 January 2008

Glow plugs/heater plugs (2)

Robbin' bastards

So here we are waiting patiently for our heater plugs to come out from the UK.

In the meantime as we can do very little on the Santana, Adrian thought he would cycle into town and see what was on offer at the local auto-electrical garage which we have used a number of times before. Naturally - us being useless at auto-electrics, although these days slightly less than we were.

He walked in with the offending heater plug and asked if they had one.

"I'll go and look," said one of the owner's sons, and disappeared into the dungeon.

After five minutes he returned, proudly waving a Lucas spark plug box, with Land Rover written on it by hand.

Inside was exactly the part we were waiting for. But this was not a new part.

Adrian looked at it carefully. It had obviously been taken out of someone else's diesel when they had changed a set of heater plugs. Nor did it include the top pieces. It was just the plug.

Just to remind you all - the plug

The owner's son went behind the bonnet of another vehicle where his brother was working and they had a very quiet chat to think of a good price that the silly foreigner might pay. He then came out and said: "Thirty five euros." Smiling. Again.

Adrian fell on the floor.

When he picked himself up, he said, "No, thank you. I'm not paying that."

"Oh, well in that case, we'll give you a discount. Thirty euros."

"No, I'm not paying that either. And give me back my plug." Which at this point was sitting on the work bench, in the hopes that he would forget it. Including all the difficult-to-get-hold-of top parts.

Taking the piss or what?

So we have now decided to compile a useful list of small parts and consumables on the Santana which are directly compatible with Land Rover parts and I will put it on the sidebar, and keep it updated when we find new equivalent parts.